Anthony D'agostino Ran Influential Villa Nova Restaurant

DEATHS

December 23, 2004|By Joseph Rassel, Sentinel Staff Writer

For decades, Villa Nova was a social and, some would say, business center of fast-growing Central Florida. It was a place to see and to be seen, with movie stars and astronauts, politicians and business leaders eating and meeting at the Winter Park restaurant.

Discussions about development of a new theme park, Walt Disney World, were held behind closed doors at the restaurant.

A driving force at Villa Nova was Anthony J. D'Agostino, eldest son of the late Joseph and Antonetta D'Agostino, founders of Villa Nova. He was involved from the restaurant's inception.

"My grandfather was the patriarch of the business for a long time and my father was the right-hand man and later took over the business," said his daughter, Toni Lyn D'Agostino Moon of Spring, Texas.

"It was a family business," she said. "Cousins, nieces, nephews -- we all worked there at some point."

Anthony D'Agostino died Saturday in Dunnellon after suffering a brain aneurysm. He was 77.

In its heyday from the 1950s through the 1970s, celebrities including Jack Benny, Arthur Godfrey, Jayne Mansfield, Tyrone Power and astronaut Gus Grissom visited the restaurant on U.S. Highway 17-92, just south of Lee Road.

"There wasn't a launch at the Cape that wasn't celebrated at the Villa Nova," Moon said. "That was the character of the restaurant. If you had something to celebrate, that's where you would go."

D'Agostino was born in North Woburn, Mass., and was a 1952 graduate of the University of Miami with a degree in business administration. He worked all facets of the restaurant business. He bought the meats, he cut the meats, he cooked and he handled bookkeeping during routine 12- to 16-hour workdays.

"At that level of running the business, it was everybody did everything," Moon said. "He ate, slept and drank it, and did whatever was needed. He was Mr. Villa Nova."

D'Agostino was involved in other aspects of community life, serving as president of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce in the early 1960s.

He also was deeply involved in the Winter Park Sidewalk Arts Festival, Moon said. "My father was in those initial footprints into sending the festival into the premiere event it has become today."

The Villa Nova is long gone and is now the site of a CVS drugstore.

Survivors also include two sons, Michael D'Agostino, of Maitland, and Patrick D'Agostino, of St. Petersburg; three sisters, Jeanne D. Rodriguez, of Orlando, Florence Ross, of Cashiers, N.C., and Anna Belitz, of New Smyrna Beach; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.